Saint Odile from Alsace, is the patroness of 'good eye sight' and of course the Alsace. She's no longer alive - that was between 662 and 720 AD - but left us an impressive retreat. The Mont Sainte-Odile lies on a 760 meter high peak in the Alsace with a 10 km wall around it.
The road to the monastry is a 30 km roundtrip from our B&B over typical roads. Forrest, hills winding roads and an occasional hairpin. Download route for TomTom with a click on the map above.

A fine route if your slighly nervous wife rides on the rear seat for the first time...

A distance of 300 km through Luxembourg and North East France via almost exclusively secundary roads. TomTom ITN voor download here.
Destination is Boersch. The Bed and Breakfast looks like Pippi Longstocking's villa. The rooms too: a charming combination of ancient and modern, in a huge garden. Clos Saint Leonard - the B&B's full name - is part of an 18th century Benedictine abbey. In the 19th century, the villa was enlarged and embellished by local artists.

The last stretch of the journey is a rider's Walhalla. Relatively fast roads through a hilly dense forest. An incidental hairpin to keep you on guard...

For something completely different, here is the windmill thing again. The hike ends in - what you could call - a charming cultivated landscape. NOT! Someone thought, it was necessary, to improve the view by placing a handful of noisy, view-ruining, bird-grinding, moderately effective alternators on a stick.

The first day - as Zygrib already forecasted - is like a grand slalom around the showers. We wait until eleven before the showers have moved far enough East to follow, without the risk of overtaking them. Between Liège and Vervier our luck runs out. Immeately after lunch - at the recommended 'Dwaze Herder' - on one of the lousiest stretches of Belgian motor way, torrential rain tries to run us off the road. As I suspected, the Belgian roads with their repairs and potholes are a real threat when wet.

Glad to check into 'Manoir Kasselslay' which isn't just a really decent and hospitable hotel, but also a very fine restaurant.

Wednesday, July 29

Everything packed. Remarkable how important chargers are nowadays. The phone, tablet, laptop, photo camera, even the helmet -with its built-in bluetooth set - has one of these usb connectors!
Then there is the mandatory equipment. I never carry any of that stuff around in the Netherlands, but in France they have rediculous requirements and I have convinced myself that the French police are looking for stupid tourists like me to fill their coffers with the revenues from fines.
So we have a yellow trafic safety vest, two breathalyser tests, a first aid kit and a payment chip for the toll roads (péage); I hope they condone the absence of a 2 kg fire extinguisher...

Oh... and the American GFS model is right - KNMI was wrong - it will be raining tomorrow... (ZyGrib is a very usefull little program)

Tuesday, July 28

The TomTom Rider 400 is a completely new toy for me. Initially I was quite disappointed that the TomTom software did not support the creation of customised routes. Until I discovered that you should actually use a different tool that you can download for free. Tyre has a somewhat old-fashioned look and feel, but even the free version does what it needs to do: "Put way points on a map and plan the route". It saves the route as an ITN file on the computer, which transfers through the USB cable to the TomTom; so workable that I enthousiastically continued creation of more and more itineraries. 'Cause from Luxembourg we go south into France to a small town called Bœrsch.

Click to download ITN for TomTom

We'll be using the scenic route this time. A good thing, because I forgot a few basics about European road travel.

France
We will be going to France. The country where people have perfected the art of protesting to the highest standards. If the underground is running in Paris, you'll probably have a truck drivers' slow-down goings-on on the motorway. If the civil-servants' union goes back to work, the cleaners go on strike.
And we've the French farmers, with their bloackages of the A31 and A4 motorways. Exactly our route...

Weather
Never assume what meteorologists and astronomers call summer, actually is summer. Weather in Northern Europ is predictable for 24 hours at max. And right now, the models expect rain.
This is where I revert to a tool from the world of sailing, ZyGrib. ZyGrib is a French (!) tool which basically downloads raw meterological forecast data (GRIB files). That data is from the American NOAA GFS model, which differs from the model that our own KNMI uses (HIRLAM). But ZyGrib offers detailed local predictions with a 3 hour interval.
For Thursday, KNMI puts a trough and front above Danmark on Thursday, with no significant rain.
Zygrib on the other hand, puts the front over the southern part of NL, with significant showers. Let's hope KNMI is right this time. In both cases we have a pleasant tail wind all the way to Luxembourg.

On board the boat we have these GRIB files as overlay on the GPS plotter. It would be nice to have something similar on the motorcycle. And better with 4G you can do that real time!

Monday, July 27

It's about time. Never before, I used the motorcycle for anything else than transportation. Duh! Some say: "from A to B is the only thing you can do with a motorcycle." Well... there are others that actually keep one, as a piece of art, in their living room. I usually stick to the daily commute, but this time I'm talking about the holy grail in motorcycling: "The Motorcycle Tour." Riding for the sake of riding. Riding, not to go from A to B, but to be underway from A to B.
I'm cheating too. Despite the ST1300's nickname ('Honda Samsonite'), my wife in the car will carry the bulk of the luggage. Anyhow we're going Pan European...

Dashing from the Netherlands to Luxembourg.
Click to download TomTom ITN file.

First day will be a dash to get out of the Netherlands. Straight into Maastricht, only to leave the motorway well across the Belgium border. For the last bit to our Bed & Breakfast of choice, secondary roads into the northern part of Luxembourg. I'm betting on this being the point where it starts to feel like A Tour.